It’s hard to nitpick a double-digit victory on the road against a previously undefeated team.
But the Chargers’ Mike McCoy wouldn’t be a head coach in the National Football League if he couldn’t find lemons among the lemonade, even after Sunday’s impressive 22-10 win over the Buffalo Bills.
“We need to play consistently for four quarters,” he said on Monday. “Unfortunately, at the end of the game we didn’t finish the way we wanted to, with the three and outs in the fourth quarter.”
He has a point, as the Chargers failed to earn a first down in four full drives and part of a fifth in the final quarter. The Chargers did cling to a 10-point lead heading into the quarter and were in somewhat of a grind-it-out mode to finish the game.
“That’s something we have to do better as an offense, to put teams away when you have the opportunity,” he said.
Donald Brown ran the ball eight times in the quarter for a net gain of zero yards. He finished with a career-high 31 carries for just 62 yards, a 2.0 average. Still, he gained McCoy’s praise filling the void left by the injured Danny Woodhead.
“For what Donald did in the backfield there with the number of touches he had carrying the ball, was outstanding,” McCoy said.
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The defense also did its part in salting away the game, shutting out the Bills in the fourth quarter while picking up a safety with just over three minutes left in the game.
That doesn’t take away from McCoy’s disdain for his team’s offensive woes to close out the game.
“When a team knows you’re going to run it, when you’re up the way we were by 10 points, we just gotta do a better job,” he said.
